Playing Jesus Christ over five seasons in Prime Video’s “The Chosen” has given actor Jonathan Roumie a chance to do a myriad of iconic biblical miracles, such as turning water into wine and multiplying fish and bread to feed 5,000 people, among others.
But headed into Season 6, which premieres Sunday with the first three episodes and subsequent ones dropping each week, Roumie was about to play a crucial chapter in Jesus’ life — his crucifixion. “Out of all the seasons, it was this season that I was most nervous about in that I didn’t really know how to prepare emotionally for this,” he says. To calm his nerves and perhaps seek his own miracle for the challenges ahead, the New York City native found solace by doing one simple thing — he prayed.
“I had no idea how I was going to do it or what to expect, so I simplified my prayer and distilled it into one concise prayer,” he says. “Basically, I prayed that, ‘Lord, if you want me to experience a percentage of a percentage of a percentage of what you actually went through, I will willingly offer myself up in that way.’ And he took me up on it. He was true to his word, and I was true to mine.”
“The Chosen” has been telling Jesus’ story since it premiered in 2019 and blew up with audiences during the 2020 pandemic when the first season was livestreamed for free on YouTube, Facebook and “The Chosen” app. Initially a crowdfunding endeavor that aired on multiple broadcast and streaming networks, earlier episodes also often aired in theaters first, which made it ineligible for Emmy consideration.
However, last year, Prime Video struck a first-air deal that not only brings Season 6 to television first but it also opens the door for it to be a contender for next year’s Emmys. (The finale of the season will be a feature film shown in theaters on March 12, 2027, and stream on Prime Video at a future date.)
The season is momentous for other reasons, too, given that the entirety covers the 24-hour window of Jesus’ arrest, trial, torture and, finally, crucifixion on the cross. That’s a lot to squeeze into six episodes plus the feature film season finale, but all series creator Dallas Jenkins had to do was remember his commitment to the story of Jesus when he created “The Chosen.”
“We were always going to focus on authenticity and the humanity of these people, including Jesus, and that has sustained us,” says Jenkins, who directs all episodes and co-writes with Ryan Swanson and Tyler Thompson. “I think that’s allowed us to avoid jumping the shark because we just really kept focus on the same intimate, authentic storytelling [of the show’s first season].”
“We were always going to focus on authenticity and the humanity of these people, including Jesus, and that has sustained us,” says series creator Dallas Jenkins.
(Richard Foreman / Prime)
It picks up on the cliffhanger when disciple Judas (Luke Dimyan) betrays Jesus by turning him over to Roman guards and religious leaders who fear Jesus’ growing popularity and followers will damage their own power and influence. Fueling the fire is also the fact that they view his public proclamations that he is the son of God to be both blasphemous and unlawful despite multiple stories of miracles that they choose not to believe.
Jenkins and his writers who crafted this part of the story took delicate care given they didn’t want any of it to feel like a stained-glass version. “A lot of our conversations were ‘OK, how do we find this balance between the humanity of Jesus and the divinity of Jesus?’” Jenkins says. “‘How much would Jesus say when he’s on the cross? How much would he say when he’s getting flogged? How much would he say in these moments that are very sacred to a lot of people?’”
For Roumie, he felt obligated to play not just the emotional side of Jesus during this chapter but also the physical. While he says nobody asked him to lose the nearly 25 pounds he shed for the sixth season, “it was what I felt was necessary. I wanted people just to see this image and be like, ‘Yeah, that’s what Christ on the cross would look like,’” he says. “I worked really hard at it and I pulled it off so I’m pretty proud of that.”
The actor, who stands 6 feet tall, says he weighed 153 pounds at his leanest. “It’s been a love-hate relationship with my scale,” he says.
Roumie’s co-star, George H. Xanthis, who plays John the Apostle, the only disciple to be at the site of the crucifixion, saw first-hand what Roumie was going through as Jesus, when he carries the cross in brutal scenes shot on location in Matera, Italy. “Even when Jonathan wants to take a rest [during filming], his knees have got to go onto the concrete floor with rocks and sand,” Xanthis says, acknowledging that at times differentiating between the actor and Jesus was a challenge.
Simon Peter (Shahar Isaac), left, and John (George H. Xanthis) in a scene from Season 6 of “The Chosen.”
(Richard Foreman / Prime)
Aside from his disciples and closest followers, the person closest to Jesus is his mother, Mary (Vanessa Benavente). He tells her he will meet his end, but “we approach it in the way that she doesn’t know the details,” says Benavente. Once she hears Jesus has been arrested this season, she races to find him. “I need to go to Jesus because I need to get confirmation, I need to know if this is it and her confirmation comes in Episode 6 and it’s just heartbreaking,” says Benavente.
In keeping with the show’s effort to portray everyone as three-dimensional, Judas’ part of the story doesn’t end after his betrayal. “We don’t deny that Judas is ultimately the villain who does make the fatal choice, but it’s also a tragic story because he is in many ways a chess piece,” says Jenkins. In fact, viewers might find themselves empathizing with him. “What are the steps that would take him to make those decisions? And yes, that can be empathizing and it can cause us to see his humanity. That’s a good thing but ultimately, he makes a wrong choice,” he says.
Another good thing was shooting the final crucifixion scene on location in Italy after Jenkins and his team realized the show’s Texas and Utah sets wouldn’t work. “When we would look at [the 2004 film] ‘The Passion of the Christ’ or any of the multiple other crucifixion sequences that have been filmed in Matera, Italy, we would go, ‘That’s what we need,’” Jenkins says, explaining a scouting trip to southern Italy was arranged. “We knew it would be more expensive and so we went to our partners at Come and See, who provide the financing, and we said, ‘This is the location, this is what it could look like.’ They agreed that it was worth the extra expense.”
Jenkins says the Italy shoot “was the hardest thing any of us had done” but despite the challenging work there, Roumie found something in his portrayal that surprised him. “The nature of his compassion in the midst of the most gruesome death for the people that put him there and the people that were jeering and cursing and spitting at him and the people that just hated him, just being able to forgive them from the cross,” he says. “Ultimately what that boils down to is just the nature of forgiveness and what does it mean to forgive people and where do you draw the line? With Christ, He didn’t draw the line. There was a level of compassion that I was just overwhelmed by.”
Alongside the show’s humanity and compassion, supernatural moments like Jesus walking on water, bringing sight to the blind or bringing a few people back to life have been frequent. However, while those scenes were done with minimal or no special effects and kept as grounded in reality as possible, something new emerges in this chapter in the form of the angels. “Season 6 felt like the right season to finally see that the spiritual plane is meeting the earthly plane, and past, present and future are all happening at once,” says Jenkins of the angels, who appear throughout the season ready to protect Jesus from harm.
“I would say [the angels were] probably the boldest choice we’ve made in all of these seven seasons,” Jenkins says. “There’s a key moment in the Gospels when Jesus says to his followers, ‘Don’t you know that at any moment I can call on a legion of angels and they will come and rescue me?’”
However, Jesus never asks to be rescued because he knows the scriptures will then go unfulfilled. “To know that at any point he could have gotten out of this, I think is an extraordinarily important part of the story,” Jenkins says.
Jonathan Roumie and series creator Dallas Jenkins on the set of “The Chosen.”
(Richard Foreman Jr.)
Part of the boldness is the appearance of the angels, who are not the winged, flying cherubs that may come to mind. Instead, the angels are fierce-looking, have long, black hair with silvery skin and dress in warrior-like outfits, a look that took time to develop to make sure they didn’t appear as cosplay. However, a screening in February at a fan convention in Charlotte, N.C., gave Jenkins an indication on whether they got it right.
“I was the most nervous I’ve ever been when we showed this episode at ChosenCon in a sneak peek,” says Jenkins. “I genuinely didn’t know how people would react, but the responses to this first episode have been overwhelming so I think it’s affirmed our instinct.”
And it’s the show’s devoted audience that, in Roumie’s words, “are an extraordinary extended family.” Even though the actor has to remind them that his name isn’t Jesus but Jonathan, he sees the bigger picture. “Ultimately, if it wasn’t for the fans, we would never have gotten to where we have gotten to. We wouldn’t reach the corners of the globe that we’ve reached, which has been absolutely incredible but also tells me that there’s a hunger for quality storytelling.”
Though the reality that the show recently wrapped its seventh and final season (which doesn’t have an air date yet) is just starting to sink in, Roumie is looking ahead. “That’s what I’ve devoted my life to, even beyond ‘The Chosen,’ is just telling stories with impact that can challenge and engage people but are at the highest artistic level possible that compete with anything else coming out of Hollywood or anywhere else.”
Praise be.
